


The Parachute

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: Biggles Series - W. E. Johns, The Camels Are Coming - W. E. Johns
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Flying, Gen, Night On Fic Mountain 2019, Night on Fic Mountain Pinch Hit, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 21:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19281841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Letter to parachute manufacturer Schroeder from Leutnant Helmut Steinbrecher, who on the evening of June 27th 1918 successfully baled out of his burning Jasta 46 Albatros after an encounter with a British Camel, the first pilot on either side to escape a flaming aircraft and live.'I congratulate you on the splendid success of your parachute. I am carrying it ever since that flight and do not want to fly without it any more. As far as I know this was the first time that a parachute was used under actual wartime conditions and that it was used for a jump from a single-seater to boot. Congratulations once again on your excellent parachute.'





	The Parachute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aquatics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquatics/gifts).



July. The mess hall was full of strangers, and Biggles had taken to tossing off a glass of rough French brandy before dawn patrol. It reminded him of the Boxing Day hunt, and the measures of port the old butler carried out to the riders in their scarlet jackets, although in this grimmer world the quarry Biggles rose to meet in the dawn was a different animal altogether. He was eighteen years old, and felt forty. He had killed more men than he could remember, men tumbling out of the sky in flames, men leaping from burning aircraft to certain death, men riddled by the scythe of his twin Vickers guns. Death was so commonplace it seemed meaningless. Biggles' war in that endless summer of 1918 was a flat, grey affair, in which he flew and drank and flew again, picking off the German Albatros machines with terrible precision. His aircraft was an extension of his own body, and the only time he felt complete was in his cockpit, alone in the sky, the only brief spasm of feeling the moment when he scored a fatal hit on another enemy plane. It felt to him as if the war would never end, and his own death was predetermined: it was merely accident that he was still alive.

Sometimes he wondered if the Germans felt the same. It seemed to him that the prisoners they had taken recently had been not quite... They were a mixed crowd, sullen and angry, and given to spouting all kinds of nationalistic claptrap. A different type of man altogether from the merry, debonair pilots of 1917, when there had been a fierce joy in the dog-fights over no-mans-land, and a camaraderie in the skies and out of them. The pilots of the new German circuses were rigorously drilled, flying in formation as if they were nothing more than infantry on parade. Twenty or more Albatros massed together looked as formidable as heavy cavalry, but there was no room to maneuver in those tight squadrons, no sky into which the pilots could escape, so that a flight of Camels, diving out of the sun, could scatter aircraft willy-nilly across the entire horizon, sending startled youngsters into screaming dives or ill-judged dodges that smashed wing-tip against wing-tip, snapped struts, and seized over-wrought engines, and all of it without even a shot fired. 

Biggles, who had piloted the first diving Camel and led the four that followed it, eased off his throttle and let his aircraft level out. His left foot jerked, a reflexive twitch that - well, he had not yet welshed out of a fight. He squinted up, counting off the Albatros against the blue sky, one spiraling down, back broken, seven still in formation, another three above those, one leaving a thin smoke-trail, two locked together in a hellish conflagration and yet somehow still flying, five that had already turned tail and were fleeing for the safety of the balloon line. High above them, a single yellow Albatros turned lazy spirals in the deep blue of the sky, its pilot waving his arms in wind-milling circles. Must be their squadron leader, Biggles thought incuriously. His ambush group safely on their way to the English lines, Biggles let his own Camel drift along the hedgeline, using the long dawn shadows to disguise his route. Above him, scarlet flames were beginning to show through the smoke...

Good God, Biggles thought. He craned upwards, wide-eyed behind his oil-grimed goggles, mouth open. He had thought he was past astonishment, but this, this was beyond all things. The sky had blossomed. White parachutes bloomed like moon-daisies, snapping open, and then floating with uncanny grace, and beneath them pilots swung suspended in harnesses that would carry them safely to the ground. Two men had cleared the plummeting mess of the tangled Albatros, and even as Biggles watched another joined them, escaping the flames. Beneath them, the pilot of the spiraling aircraft, who should have been dead already, was waving at his comrades as he drifted downwards. Biggles could see the parachutists slide further towards the safety of the German lines, alive and ready to fight another day. 

With difficulty, he dragged his eyes away, and checked the remains of the German circus. Most of them had fled, but the Albatros that had been smoking was circling, as if its rudder had jammed, and the squadron leader was shadowing it. Flames licked at the cowling, and the smoke trail was dense and black. A slight young pilot clambered out of the cockpit, and balanced himself against the wind. Biggles, unconsciously, braced himself for the terrible, twisting fall of a pilot who chose to leap rather than die in flames, or shoot his brains out with the service revolver they all carried under the seat. There was something awfully familiar about the German pilot, something about the angle of his head and the shape of his shoulders - Biggles, who had thought himself beyond sentimentality, swallowed.

The pilot turned his head. His face was pale, and densely freckled. Under his flying helmet, his hair would be fiery red: wisps of it, longer than regulation, blew in the wind.

"No!" exclaimed Biggles.

The pilot waved to his squadron leader, and leapt from the aircraft. Biggles was close enough to see the line that ran from his back-pack to the fuselage, the jerk as it came taut, and then the sudden and glorious ballooning of the parachute. Five hundred feet above the ground, floating in the air, the German pilot was laughing, just as if he'd jumped from a stationery observation balloon and not an aircraft travelling at over a hundred miles an hour, twice as high in the sky as any balloon.

Biggles' hands were sweaty on his rudder. Must be nerves, he thought to himself, and squared his chin. There was nothing for it, he resolved. He'd speak to the Old Man.

"I'm telling you, Bigglesworth, it can't be done," said Major Mullen. "Air Command have been fighting us on parachutes since 1915. I'm sorry, old boy."

The Major's eyes were narrowed and deep-set, as if he had spent most of the war squinting into the sun. There were grey shadows under his cheekbones and his curly hair was miserably subdued, but Biggles knew no better Commanding Officer. Mullen fought tooth and nail to get the squadron its machines and its mechanics, and turned a blind eye to its wine cellar and its irregular guests. 

"The Germans must have saved four of their pilots today," Biggles said. "Four. And that's just our sector. Multiply that along the whole of the front."

The Major took off his glasses and laid them down on his desk. He had been writing a letter, Biggles noticed. 'Dear Mrs. Anhew. Please accept my heartfelt sympathies-' Who had Anhew been? The tall one, or the undersized one who had made that off-colour joke?

"Air Command argue that parachutes will lead to cowardice," Major Mullen said, his voice even more clipped than usual. 

Biggles had to close his eyes. His fists were clenched. "The asinine, abominable-"

"I didn't hear that, Captain," said Major Mullen.

"We must have a viable parachute," Biggles said urgently. "The Germans have one. Something that will open at speed, and open quickly, too."

"Mr. Calthrop has been forbidden to sell to individual purchasers," said Major Mullen. "That avenue has been tried before."

Biggles looked up. The Major looked back. With astonishment, Biggles realised that the Major was as angry as he was, and had been so for considerably longer. His rage was cold. 

Drawing himself up, Biggles snapped off a salute. "Permission to execute a raid on enemy territory, sir," he said, staccato and clear. "Permission to take volunteers."

"Granted," said Major Mullen. 

He'd asked for a diversion, but he hadn't expected it to be quite so effective. Algy was up for anything, of course, his cheerful face alight with mischief, but the New Zealander who had suggested feinting a raid on the chateau where the German bakery was sited, extra fuel tanks visibly strapped to the Camels, had known what he was doing. The entire German aerodrome emptied of every Albatros that could fly, pilots racing out of the huts and taking off one after the other, jockeying for space in the air. Biggles spared a thought for his friends in that putative raiding party, but he was already easing his Camel's nose downwards out of the evening sun, gaining speed. It would have to be the fastest of raids, if he was caught on enemy territory, if he was captured - Biggles pushed the rudder a little harder. There were Lewis guns at the far end of the runway, where the staffen offices were, but he'd gambled that they'd have a limited field, and he was pleased to note, as he screamed down to the runway, that he was right. The Germans had not planned to shoot down an aircraft on their own runway, and the Lewis guns were spitting impotently into the sky while Biggles flew under the bullets. The Camel hopped on the grass, bumped, slowed, spun as Biggles turned towards the hangers... Biggles could see men in grey spill out of the huts, but he had sprung out the cockpit, revolver in hand. He'd pulled up as close to the entrance as he dared. Now, he ran, head down, three or four strides taking him into the hanger with its familiar smell of oil and landscape of dismantled aircraft and men in overalls.

"Ach, Gott!" exclaimed a burly German ack-emma in a pristine overall. "Tommy!"

Biggles flourished his pistol. "Fallschirm!" he shouted. "Einen Fallschirm! Schnell!" He could see the canvas back-packs, stacked up on in a wicker basket. "Jetzt!" He fired a shot into the air, and was startled by the scream of the bullet as it tore through the hanger roof.

The ack-emma pointed, sneering, but a much older man ran to the basket and tugged a whole stack of back-packs free, two, four - "Schnell!" Biggles shouted, and then, absurdly mortified at invading the private space of the German NCOs, "Bitte!"

The old man was running towards him, thrusting the parachutes into his hands, and Biggles had to put down his gun to take them. 

"Gott Strafe England," muttered the older man, bundling straps into Biggles' fierce grip.

"But not today," Biggles said back, grinning. "Danke schön!"

He ran for it. No one shot back. He was trailing rope and canvas, shoving the back-packs with their precious parachutes into the Camel's cockpit. The propeller was still spinning; he wedged himself into place, and heaved it down. The engine, miraculously caught. Biggles leapt for the cockpit, and found himself perched on parachutes, had to scrabble for the rudder, fight to pull the throttle back, the Camel struggling to make enough speed on the last few feet of the runway. A Lewis gun started up behind him, and Biggles felt the bullets pass over his head: the Camel's wheels left the runway - he was in the air - he was away - 

Even the thought of flying home across enemy lines with a cockpit full of sliding back-packs could not quell Biggles' triumph. He had dared the Hun in his own den, and won - won cleanly! - and was carrying home the prize.

"Right," said Algy doubtfully. "You want me to...wear this."

The two of them were lounging outside the hanger, in the last of the evening light, with one of the parachutes spread out in front of them, carefully unpacked from its back-pack, so that the ack-emmas could have a good look at how it worked. With a confident nod, Biggles had been assured that a fitting for the rigging that opened the parachute would be on his and Algy's aircraft by morning. It remained only to persuade his cousin.

"You won't notice a thing," said Biggles. 

"Said the actress to the bishop," Algy quipped mournfully. His cheerful, freckled face looked unusually doubtful, although nothing could quench the enthusiasm of his bright red hair. "I could always wear one of Uncle Freddie's?" he offered.

One of the parachutes had been despatched post-haste to a family connection, who owned a factory in the East End. The whole squadron would have parachutes within the month, Air Command or no Air Command.

Biggles brought out the big guns. "Algernon Montgomery Lacey," he said. "What would your mother say?"

Algy blanched. Biggles nodded at him, and bent to roll up the parachute. "I'll tell you what," he said, magnanimous in victory. "Let's take the tender over to Squadron 29 in the morning. We can borrow one of their two-seaters."

"Oh, no," said Algy. 

"I've always wanted to jump out of an aircraft," said Biggles.

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Leutnant Helmut Steinbrecher's letter is quoted in Ian MacKersey's _No Empty Chairs_ ; I used the 2008 RHCP digital edition of _The Camels are Coming_.


End file.
